The Miserable Phantom of the 11th Street Lot
by PhantomGreg
Summary: I always wondered what would happen if you combined Les Mis, Phantom, and RENT into one story. This is my odd result of my attempt to do this. SLASH! ifyou don't like humorous fics, its OK-it gets very serious later. It stays good! Chapter 2 is up!
1. Release from Jail

Note: This story by no means intends to disrespect people with AIDS, nor make light of the AIDS epidemic. It is a terrible thing; my friend has AIDS and I am terrified that one day I'll loose him. I am only making AIDS seem light for the purpose of the story. Please don't be offended, or if you are then don't come and flame me. Just read the story and later on I'll put it in the serious context that the disease deserves. And if you dissect this story, you will see that I never actually make light of the AIDS epidemic itself, I talk about that very seriously and I make jokes about other things around it that happen to pertain to it.  
  
I also mean no offense to gay people. I am gay and I have a lot of fun pretending to be the stereotypical fashion-designing lisping gay man to scare people away. I am just now playing Javert in a production of Les Mis and me and some of my friends decided that Javert was so totally a flaming homosexual. So this is that story, as well as Les Mis, Phantom, and Rent.  
  
Here is the Story.  
  
The year was 1998; the setting, a large prison based in France. The head prison guard, Javert, was making his rounds through the galleys, inspecting each prisoner's work as they chopped up boulders using nothing but toothpicks. He stopped in front of a woman whose black and white striped shirt read "24601". Javert frowned and played with his goatee. He shifted his stick which he used to beat people with to his left hand and held the palm of his right hand up to his face.  
  
"I knew I wrote something about this woman on here," he murmured as he pulled his sleeve up, looking for a note he wrote on his skin in purple pen. Purple was his favorite color.  
  
He made his way up his arm, pulling his sleeve up as he went. When he got up to his shoulder he unbuttoned his shirt and prisoner 24601 spun around and stared lustfully and yet uselessly. He would never go for her. She wasn't his type. She though it odd to fall for her prison guard, but after all, he was stunning and irresistibly attractive.  
  
After a few seconds he found the note which was written on his perfectly shaped pectoral muscle, and he read it out loud.  
  
"Give prisoner 24601 her yellow ticket of leave," he read, and then looked up at the woman who was now clenching her jaw with lust..or was it love?.either way, it's irrelevant. They don't get together, in case you were wondering.  
  
Javert reached into his pocket and took out a pink blowtorch (the secret of French prisons is that all their prison guards carry around pink blowtorches). He ordered prisoner 24601 to hold out her arms, which were chained to the floor.  
  
"My name is Joanne," prisoner 24601 said indignantly.  
  
"And I am.," Javert said, leaving a big space to provide an air of suspense, "JAVERT! Do not forget my name!"  
  
At that moment, another stunning and irresistibly attractive prison guard made his way past Javert and brushed up against his backside.  
  
"You'll be screaming it later!" Javert yelled, calling out to the prison guard. "24601!" he finished, directing his attention back to Joanne. He lit the blowtorch and held it to the chains binding her arms. After a few minutes the strongest part of the chain melted and she was free.  
  
Joanne stood there and stared at him. After nineteen years of work in the galleys, she was now free? She asked this of Javert.  
  
"No, you stupid twit," he answered, like this was the most obvious answer in the world. "It means you get your yellow ticket of leave! You are a thief! Or is it thiefette? What's politically correct?"  
  
Joanne ignored this.  
  
"I stole some AZT!"  
  
"You robbed a CVS!"  
  
"I broke.a window pane!" (catching the Javert Syndrome, Joanne decided to leave a large gap between the verb and the direct object). "My sister was dying! She had AIDS!"  
  
Javert considered this. AIDS was a serious thing. He knew it; his previous boyfriend had had it, before he dumped him for another prison guard. That bitch.  
  
"Well.still.." he stammered, unsure of what to say, "just..get out of here, okay?"  
  
He gave her a pat on the ass. He never knew how to act in this sort of situation. It always made him feel uncomfortable.  
  
"Just learn the meaning of the law," he suddenly burst out, remembering his duty.  
  
"I know the meaning of.what the hell is a yellow ticket of leave, anyway?" Joanne asked. That whole conversation had passed and she didn't even know what had happened.  
  
Javert rolled his eyes.  
  
"You stupid twit. A yellow ticket of leave is what I give you which means that you're free."  
  
"So I am free?"  
  
Javert caught his mistake and mentally kicked himself.  
  
"No, not free, per se, but free as in, you no longer have to cut boulders up into tiny bits using toothpicks."  
  
"You mean now I can use a screwdriver?"  
  
"No, no, no, it means you can leave, get outta here. Gone from this place. Live your own life now."  
  
"So why isn't that free?"  
  
Javert thought about this for a while, then shrugged.  
  
"I have no idea," he said. " Oh, but you have to wear this."  
  
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a neon yellow emblem that had a cherub holding a harp in one hand and a toothpick in another behind bars, the official seal of their prison. Also written on it were the words, "Hey, yo, I'm an ex-convict so watch out!" He peeled off the back and stuck the sticker on Joanne's forehead.  
  
"So this is what defines freedom and 'yellow ticket of leave'," Joanne suggested.  
  
"I suppose you could say that," Javert agreed, making sexual movements with his tongue to the same prison guard who now passed in the opposite direction.  
  
"I'll be seeing you later," he whispered at Joanne, hardly glancing at her as he rushed off after the prison guard to the lounge, excitedly trembling. 


	2. The Catholic Priest

It should be noted at this point that Joanne is a lesbian.  
  
There are some people who are just so stunning and irresistibly attractive that they turn gay women straight and straight men gay. Javert is one of those people. In fact, every single man who worked as a prison guard at that facility had been straight until Javert arrived. After that they were just as flaming as he was. There was just something about his face, his perfectly formed body, and rumors about his slightly small feet being inaccurately proportioned to other parts of his body. And those eyes! Those eyes could melt even the coldest of ice.  
  
Joanne had no idea where to begin with her new life, or how. She was ecstatic that after nineteen years, she was finally free from prison and from the cold metal cots that she slept on every night, and free from breaking apart boulders with toothpicks (I feel that it is safe to mention now without endangering the humorous potential of the story that the toothpicks were actually a breakthrough in agricultural technology and were grown from severely genetically modified trees which produce a wood that is ten times stronger than steel. The only downside of this plant is that it only flowers once, producing only one toothpick fruit ever in its entire life before it dies, leaving the seed to be extracted from the interior of the toothpick to be planted for next year's harvest).  
  
Joanne decided to begin with what she knew she could do.  
  
"How may I help you," the ugly old lady at the reception desk in the employment office stated rather than asked. Her voice sounded vaguely like Paul Rogers from the Gardener's Calendar which you can hear on WTAG on the AM side of the Radio on Saturday Mornings (or was it FM? I have no idea.). For those of you out there who are fortunate enough to have never heard his radio show, I will tell you now that his voice sounds like he has a permanent frog stuck in there, and people listening tend to have a strong urge to cough for him.  
  
"Yes, you can," Joanne said politely. "I'd like a job."  
  
"Well, obviously, Honey. Would you like fries with that?"  
  
"No."  
  
The lady twirled her pencil around with her fingers.  
  
"Well what do you want me to do about it?" she grumbled after a moment, still not having looked up from her paperwork (which Joanne saw was nothing but tic-tac-toe).  
  
"Um, give me one, perhaps?"  
  
The lady suddenly put down her book, and Joanne sighed, expecting good service at last. But good service she did not receive, for all the lady did was throw her head back and laugh.  
  
"What?" Joanne yelled, getting angry, and the lady suddenly sobered up.  
  
"Well, I would think that if you wanted a job you would at least tell me what your skills are!"  
  
Joanne thought a moment, panicking. Skills? Skills? She didn't have any skills! No.wait a minute!  
  
"I can, you know, pick rocks apart with toothpicks," she offered.  
  
The lady roared with laughter again.  
  
"Well, Honey, you have to tell me some usefull skills if you really want a j-"  
  
She had looked up at Joanne for the first time, and abruptly stopped talking. Her eyes made their way to the neon yellow cherub sticker plastered on her forehead and she stared.  
  
"Sorrywe'reclosedforbusiness," she said quickly, loudly, and very clearly as she reached under the desk and pulled out a self-standing sign and slammed it on the table, upside-down as it may be. Upside-down it read "PesoD". Joanne interpreted this as meaning "Closed".  
  
"Ma'am? I'd still like a job."  
  
The woman continued with her paperwork.  
  
"Fuck," Joanne muttered, and decided that something else needed doing.  
  
Once outside, Joanne had no idea what to do so she sat on a bench outside of the pawn-shop. She had already sold her coat, hat, shoes, socks, shirt, pants, and her cute little puppy dog earrings, but this had only sold for ten cents and she had dropped the change down the sewer as soon as she left the shop and she was now left moneyless and without clothes. She was terrified that Javert would find her and put her in jail for another nineteen years for indecent exposure, so she went to the first house she could find, planning to ask for clothes and some food.  
  
The first door she knocked on belonged to a house that belonged to a Catholic priest.  
  
"Um, I think I'll try next door," Joanne murmured hurriedly before attempting to run off the stoop.  
  
The priest stopped her.  
  
What happened during the few hours before the night at the house of the priest is not interesting enough to be spoken about. To answer the question that is no doubt on your minds, no, the priest did not rape her; this was a nice priest. He gave her clothes, food, and a place to sleep (which was in a completely separate bedroom). However, Joanne had noticed that the priest had a large stash of holy water which he kept in his bedroom; she figured that she could steal it and sell it on the black market to faith healers and the like. She'd justified it with the fact that no one was ever going to give her clean money, so she figured that she would just have to get it in different ways.  
  
As she crept into his bedroom, she started singing to herself quietly.  
  
"When the house was sleeping.I got up in the night. Took the water, took.my.FLIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!"  
  
The priest jolted awake, as did the whole rest of the city. Joanne should have realized that belting out her last words before a crime would have woken people up. Silly girl.  
  
She ran downstairs, accidentally popping off the cap spilling the holy water all over the floor. When she got to the bottom she flung open the door and was out.  
  
Unfortunately, this flight that she took lasted only a few minutes, for police cars are a lot faster than human legs.  
  
Joanne sat in the back of the police car as the two constables, both of which were former boyfriends of Javert, walked up to the priest's house. They knocked on the door and disappeared inside.  
  
What went on inside is described here.  
  
The priest welcomed the constables into his home warmly, and asked them to explain why they so rudely barged their way in.  
  
"So tell me, gentlemen, what is wrong in this world that you would come to me for assistance?"  
  
The constables glanced at each other stupidly across the kitchen table.  
  
"Um, assistance?" Constable 1 said.  
  
"Well, why else would you be here?"  
  
"Well," Constable 2 began, "aren't you missing anything?"  
  
The priest thought about this for a minute.  
  
"No. Should I be?"  
  
"Yes, you should be. Gee, didn't she wake you up too?" (Constable 1)  
  
[pause]  
  
"Who?"  
  
"The convict." (2)  
  
[lengthier pause]  
  
"Convict?"  
  
"Yes." (1)  
  
"The convict. Oh! The convict! You mean Joanne?"  
  
(While the priest was terrible at feigning ignorance, the constables were even more terrible at detecting it.)  
  
"Yes," they said together, "Joanne."  
  
"No, she didn't wake me up, why?"  
  
Constable 1 decided that this conversation was going nowhere so he also decided to cut right to the point of their whole arrival in the first place.  
  
"We just picked up a convict-"  
  
"Joanne."  
  
"We just picked up a Joanne on the road a few minutes ago, and she was carrying this."  
  
He pulled out a four-gallon plastic jug of holy water, its cap missing and the water nearly gone  
  
"Yes, she would have been. Why did you take it from her?"  
  
The constables looked confused.  
  
"Well, it's yours, isn't it?" #2 asked.  
  
"No."  
  
"But it's holy water, and only holy people have holy water." That remarkable comment was made by constable 1.  
  
"She claims you gave it to her, but priests can't just give people their holy water, can they?" That was #2.  
  
"Well, sure they can. Can't you give people your stick if you feel like it?"  
  
The priest gestured to the stick that all police officials carried around with them (like the one that Javert used to beat people with) that constable 2 was holding.  
  
"I.I guess. I've never thought of that before! I guess I could!"  
  
"Well there. I gave Joanne the holy water, because I felt that she could use it."  
  
"What would she use it for?" constable 1 asked reasonably.  
  
"Bath water, stupid," constable 2 answered before the priest had any chance to stammer and convict himself and Joanne again.  
  
"Well, there you have it, boys! You can set her free now!"  
  
"Oh, sure," the constables both said apologetically, and they left out the door. The priest heard 3 doors open and then the unmistakable sound of handcuffs opening (I don't know how that sound is unmistakable, but obviously the priest did), and then all the doors slammed shut. The car was heard driving off down the road and the sound slowly faded away.  
  
The priest sat down and put his hands over his face, wondering why he just did what her did. That was expensive holy water!  
  
There was another knock on the door. The priest opened it, and there was Joanne, looking relieved and thankful.  
  
"I just came to say.goodbye, love," she whispered.  
  
"Really?" the priest asked. "I'm flattered."  
  
"No, not really, I actually wanted to say thank you. For what you did."  
  
The priest thought about this for a moment, and then walked into his kitchen for a moment and returned with the jug of holy water.  
  
"Here," he said, "take this. Use it to become an honest woman."  
  
Joanne looked dumbfounded.  
  
"How?" she asked.  
  
"I don't know!" the priest said. "Bless people with it."  
  
The priest then shut the door, leaving Joanne standing on his doorstep holding a near-empty jug of holy water. She was very thirsty. She wanted to drink the holy water.  
  
So she did.  
  
Afterwards, she felt stupid for drinking it, because what use is an empty holy water jug? She was going to sell the water with the money she earned.  
  
But of course, everyone knows that it's not the water that is holy, it's the jug that the water comes from. So she still had a holy jug.  
  
Joanne sold this jug the very next day, and received nearly four thousand dollars for it (e-bay). With this money she decided to pay a surgeon a large sum of that money to remove her yellow cherub sticker and to use the rest to fly to America, the Land Of Opportunity (from this point onward, I will write the acronym LOO whenever I want to mention America, the Land Of Opportunity. It takes a lot less time to write and is a whole lot easier to spell).  
  
Once in America Joanne began a new life. 


End file.
